Overseas Relief Tasks Outlined at Jewish Social Welfare Conference

The three-day session of the National Conference of Jewish Social Welfare concluded here today with a round table on overseas relief at which Louis H. Sobel of the Joint Distribution Committee, who served as chairman of the discussion, outlined the staggering tasks confronting all agencies now providing aid to Europe’s starved and destitute millions.

Mr. Sobel laid particular stress on the plight of the Jewish survivors of the Nazi holocaust and outlined briefly the Joint Distribution Committee’s broad program which has made possible the survival of many of the remaining European Jews, and which is now maintaining many of the 1,250,000 who are still alive on the continent.

Participating with Mr. Sobel in the discussions were Martha H. Biehle, American resident representative of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees. Max Silverstein, liaison officer of the Welfare Division of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, Ilja Dijou of the Hias-Ica Emigration Association, and Aaron B. Tart, executive vice-chairman of the American Ort Federation.

Miss Biehle described the Intergovernmental committee’s work in the care of stateless persons, and its program for their resettlement. Mr. Dijour pictured the work of Hicen in the field of emigration and transportation, and Mr. Tart desoribed the vocational and trade training activities of the Ort and its plans for expansion of this work in the near future as an integral part of the relief and rehabilitation task for European Jewry.